“There are many of you, but Raikin is one!” What was the real life of a great artist like?

Biography of Arkady Raikin

Arkady Isaakovich Raikin was born in Riga, in the family of a port grader (a worker who determines the quality of goods) of a timber worker, Isaac Vladimirovich Raikin, and Leia (Elizaveta Borisovna) Raikina (nee Gurevich). While studying at school, he was interested in theater and even attended a drama club. He first appeared on the amateur stage as a nine-year-old boy.

Raikin loved the place where he was born all his life. But the main city became the cultural capital - Petrograd (Leningrad) - where the family moved in 1922. And the main place, regardless of its location in space, is the stage.

In 1935, Arkady Raikin graduated from the Leningrad College of Performing Arts. He became an artist against the wishes of his parents. He did a lot despite the influence of others and that is why he himself so significantly influenced his era and his contemporaries.

Childhood and adolescence

Arkady Raikin was born in 1911 in Riga, into a simple Jewish family.
His parents had nothing to do with art: his father, Isaac Davidovich, worked in the port as a timber scraper [a person who determines the quality of a product - approx. uznayvse.ru], mother, Elizaveta Borisovna, ran the household and raised children. Arkasha was their first-born, followed by two sisters - Bella and Sophia - and a younger brother Maxim. During the First World War, when the Germans approached Riga, the Raikin family moved to Rybinsk. There, five-year-old Arkady made new friends, with whom they staged impromptu performances in the yard. At home, in the absence of his parents, he also played theater - he dressed up in women's and men's clothes and appeared in different images in front of his sisters and brother.

Arkady Raikin in childhood

My father didn't like this activity. He threatened his son with a belt and shouted indignantly that a Jew should not be a clown and make faces for the amusement of the public. To distract the boy from acting, he bought him a violin, as was customary in decent Jewish families, and sent him to a music school. Arkady did not dare to contradict his father and obediently went to classes, however, on the way back he often used the violin case as a sled, dashing down the ice slides. The artist recalled: In 1922, the Raikins moved to Leningrad, where Arkasha gave up the hated violin and joined the drama club. He loved going to the theater and did not miss a single premiere, and to earn money for tickets, he sold books and notebooks. It happened that the inspectors let him in for free, already knowing the young theatergoer by sight. Over time, he became so accustomed to entering auditoriums without a ticket that once he even risked sneaking into a closed government concert in this way. Raikin was caught and, accused of espionage, was kept in Butyrka for a whole year. This happened in 1928.

At the age of thirteen, Arkady caught a bad cold and contracted a sore throat, which caused serious complications. Rheumatism and rheumatic heart disease confined him to bed for a long time, and doctors very much doubted that the teenager would be able to pull out. But fate took pity, and the boy recovered. He had to learn to walk again, but he courageously overcame all difficulties and returned to a full life. True, he still had serious heart problems, which led to frequent, repeated attacks.

Arkady Raikin in his youth

At school, Raikin's favorite subject was drawing. At one time he even wanted to become an artist, but his love for the theater still won. Arkady decided to enter the theater school, but Isaac Davidovich created a terrible scandal and literally forced his son to get a job as a laboratory assistant at the Okhta Chemical Plant. The young man worked there for a year and the following summer he finally applied for the acting department of the Leningrad College of Performing Arts, and in order to avoid new quarrels with his father, after entering he left home for the dormitory.

Arkady Raikin's group

Arkady Raikin and theater

Leningrad TRAM Theater of Working Youth is an example of proletarian art. It was here that Raikin began - active and energetic, ready to devote himself entirely to the great cause of building socialism. Yes, in the 1930s, actors also built socialism. They played leading workers, Stakhanovites, Komsomol members or young doctors.

It is quite possible that Raikin would have been a great film artist, but in the late 1930s he was not drawn to the screens. I beckoned to go on stage: to measure my strength with the audience. Either he will make them laugh, or they will boo him.

And Raikin recruited a troupe of artists. This is how the first and only private theater appeared in Leningrad - the Theater of Miniatures. Of course, according to the documents, he was listed as a government official. The directors were appointed by the authorities, and Arkady Isaakovich was only the artistic director. But this was precisely his theater, where everything was subordinate to him. And there were those artists who understood this. He never said: “My theater,” but said: “Our theater.”

The theater of miniatures is a one-man theater. Nobody could count on big roles here; the rest of the actors were only in the wings and went for it consciously. He was very offended when people left him, or when he had to part with someone for some reason, Raikin took this painfully. And he called the actors his family.

The Great Patriotic War took the artist by surprise. Raikin, by that time already the head of a family of three, including daughter Katya and wife Ruth. When the war began, 3-year-old Katya had to be evacuated to Tashkent. Her parents didn’t want to take her to war and left her with strangers. And they themselves went to the front with the artistic brigade and performed in front of the soldiers.

After the war, Arkady Raikin and his family returned to Leningrad, to the Miniature Theater. He gained popularity very quickly. And the main idea: to improve the quality of the Soviet person through satire. He treated the audience with great trepidation. There was enormous power in his personality, as if a stream of electrical energy could charge a neighbor, or could hit him hard.

Death

Arkady Raikin was a sickly person almost all his life. At the age of 13, he caught a bad cold at the skating rink, developing such a terrible sore throat that the doctors were sure that the boy would not survive. After 10 years, the disease returned, and again the doctors gave up. At that moment, he was lucky that his father-in-law was able to insist on an unpopular operation - removal of the tonsils. Raikin survived, but permanently developed rheumatic heart disease.

For the last three years, the actor suffered from Parkinson's disease, which limited his movements, facial expressions and even speech. Nevertheless, at the first opportunity he visited his native theater and handed over the business to his son, whom he loved very much.

Arkady Isaakovich Raikin died on December 17, 1987 from the consequences of rheumatic carditis. Surprisingly, a monument to the legendary artist has not yet been erected either in Moscow or St. Petersburg, except for the monument at the Novodevichy Cemetery. Although the capital authorities promise to correct this oversight in 2021.

Video

Myths and reality about Arkady Raikin

Since the early 1950s, the Theater of Miniatures has been constantly on the move. They performed in Leningrad for three months, in Moscow for two, and traveled throughout the Soviet Union for the rest.

Raikin's personality began to become overgrown with myths. In fact, Raikin received only 24 rubles for one performance. And the lion's share of earnings went to the theater and to a large family. An apartment and a Volga car - that’s all our property. All his life, Raikin only rented his dacha for the summer. And the rest is just myths that the actors live richly, that Raikin is going to leave for the USA, that he transports diamonds to Israel and sponsors world Jewry.

However, by the end of the 60s, the Leningrad authorities took a firm grip on the artist: they erased words and phrases from his monologues. But the highest point of intensity was 1970. That spring, the 100th anniversary of the birth of leader Lenin was celebrated magnificently. Raikin, as a topical satirist, also responded: he staged the play “Plus-Minus”. Author Leonid Likhodeev found little-known quotes from Lenin that took on a new, almost counter-revolutionary meaning. A denunciation was sent to the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the theater was banned from performing in Moscow and Leningrad. They sent us on a long tour. After this, Arkady Isaakovich had a heart attack.

But by the mid-1970s, the pressure from censors on Raikin had decreased significantly. With his theater he tours around the world, in particular in England, where the artist was paid a fabulous fee. True, the currency went to the state. And Raikin received rave reviews in the press.

Soviet television also did not pass by: in 1974, the landmark film “People and Mannequins” was shot. A master of transformation, he looked natural in any image. And off stage he became himself: calm, taciturn, a man with hidden sadness in his eyes.

In 1975, a misfortune happened in the Raikin family: their beloved wife Roma was paralyzed. Arkady Raikin himself was rapidly losing health. Soon I had to move from Leningrad to Moscow - the best doctors are there, the children are there. But the then city leadership did not let him go in order to hurt him. This is where my long-standing acquaintance with Brezhnev came in handy. The former colonel supported the former front-line artist.

“Peace to Thy House” is Raikin’s last performance. He rehearsed it together with the author Semyon Altov, already being a seriously ill person. The enemies said: “Raikin is no longer the same! It would be better to leave the stage gracefully, on time.” But the stage was the best medicine for him.

Shortly before his death (it was already time for perestroika to begin), Arkady Isaakovich went on a tour of America. He spoke quietly on stage, his memory failed him, his facial expressions changed, but it was him, the same beloved Raikin.

Personal life of Arkady Raikin

Arkady Isaakovich and his future wife Ruth met at the theater institute. She was standing in line in the cafeteria, he turned around, saw her and asked what she was doing there. Ruth replied that she was a first-year student. And Raikin had already graduated from university. Then he invited the girl to the cinema and, despite the very recent acquaintance, proposed to her. In 1935 they got married, and in 1938 their daughter Ekaterina, a future actress, was born. Ruth, or simply Roma, was in charge of everything in the house - that’s her pet name.

And in 1950, a son, Konstantin, was born into the Raikin family - an absolutely “behind-the-scenes” child. By the way, the artist named his son in honor of Stanislavsky. The boy was with his parents everywhere: on tour, in hotels, trains and planes. I studied at several schools at once, in different parts of the country. But it was his father who taught him the main lessons of life and art.

Konstantin, Ekaterina and Arkady Isaakovich Raikin

Childhood and youth, family

Arkady Raikin was born on October 24, 1911 in the Latvian city of Riga into a Jewish family.
Father Isaac Davidovich worked in the port with construction timber, and mother Elizaveta Borisovna (Gurevich) was a midwife who helped many babies be born. The boy was the eldest in the family, he loved his sisters Bella and Sophia, and his younger brother Maxim Arkasha very much. It is noteworthy that the parents first lived in a civil marriage, and only a year before the birth of their eldest child did they officially become husband and wife. When Arkady was five years old, he was taken from Riga, around which hostilities had already begun. The Raikin family moves to Rybinsk, where the father got a new job.

At school, the boy begins to attend a drama club, and first appeared on the amateur stage at the age of ten. At home, Arkady's hobby was not approved, especially by his father. But, having come to terms with what his son was doing, he decided that it would be nobler for a Jewish boy to take up music. They bought a violin for the child, which was never used for its intended purpose. The next city to which parents and children moved was Petrograd.

At the age of thirteen, Arkady caught a very bad cold. But nothing irreparable should have happened in Raikin’s biography. Although the consequences of the cold were severe, the boy recovered. He had to lie in bed for nine months and then learn to walk again. The recklessness in his character went away along with the illness. Having recovered, the young man began working at a chemical plant as a laboratory assistant. He studied at the Leningrad Performing Arts College without receiving permission from his parents.

Creative activity of Arkady Raikin

Theater

• "Love and Three Oranges"
• "From Two to Fifty"
• "Favorites-1973"
• "His Majesty Theater"
• "Plus or Minus"
• "Faces"
• "Peace be to your house"
• "Over a Cup of Tea"
• "White Nights"
• "Wizards Among Us"

Filmography

• 1933 - “First Platoon”
• 1939 — “Years of Fire”
• 1939 — “Tractor Drivers”
• 1939 — “Doctor Kalyuzhny”
• 1941 — “Valery Chkalov”
• 1942 - “Concert to the Front”
• 1954 - “We met somewhere”
• 1956 — “Concert of Leningrad stage and theater artists”
• 1957 — “Familiar Pictures”
• 1958 — “Man has many faces”
• 1960 — “For Bedtime”
• 1961 — “Bath”
• 1964 — “When the song doesn’t end”
• 1964 - “Blue Light-1964”
• 1965 — “New Year’s Calendar”
• 1965 — “In the first hour”
• 1966 — “Tales of the Russian Forest”
• 1967 — “Address: Theater”
• 1967, 1975 - “Arkady Raikin”
• 1967 - “Two hours earlier (pantomime “Fishing”)
• 1967 — “In half”
• 1969 - “Yesterday, Today and Always”
• 1970 — “Magic Power”
• 1973 — “The Divine Comedy”
• 1974 - “Peter Martynovich and the years of great life”
• 1974 - “People and Mannequins” (actor, director and screenwriter)
• 1985 - “Royal Sandwich”
• 1987 - “Peace be to your house”

Awards and titles

• 1945 - Order of the Patriotic War, II degree
• 1947 - Honored Artist of the RSFSR
• 1957 - People's Artist of the RSFSR
• 1968 - People's Artist of the USSR
• 1971 - Order of the Red Banner of Labor
• 1980 - Lenin Prize
• 1981 - Hero of Socialist Labor
• 1981 - Order of Lenin
• 1985 - Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree
• Order of Friendship of Peoples
• Medal "For the Defense of the Caucasus"
• Medal “In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir
• Ilyich Lenin"
• Medal "For victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945"